


Sleep When You Are Dead

by HooperMolly



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Canonical Character Death, Character Death, Introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-02
Updated: 2013-02-04
Packaged: 2017-11-27 21:03:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/666458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HooperMolly/pseuds/HooperMolly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU in which Grantaire never wakes up at the end of the fight and survives.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Blood in the Streets

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't finished reading the brick so I have no idea as to exactly how divergent this fic is, but it draws also from the film and my own imaginings. I've avoided detailed physical description where possible because I like for people to be able to imagine their own favourite portrayals. This fic might make you sad. I am sorry.

Grantaire struggled to open his eyes. His lids felt as though they were made of lead and the harsh morning light stabbed at his eyes like tiny needles.

His head was stuffy, like someone had taken out his brain and replaced it with cotton and straw. There was something important that he had forgotten, but he couldn’t reach it through the thick fog that was still firmly settled over his brain.

He supposed it could wait then. More pressing was the matter of where the hell he was. It wasn’t a gutter somewhere, which was nice. It smelled strongly of wine, which was also quite pleasant.

The floor was wooden and he could see light shining up through some of the larger gaps between the boards so he was on an upper story. The gaps were really pretty big now that he was properly looking at them.

Not even gaps really, more like holes. The wood around the holes was dark, stained red as though wine had been spilled recently. Grantaire felt a bit ill and it took him a few seconds to realise why.

Then his conscious mind caught up to what his subconscious had already figured out. It wasn’t wine. He scrambled to his feet, forcing down the wave of nausea that swept over him.

The stairs gave him a few moments pause as several of the steps had been knocked out as had the hand railing but he managed to negotiate them without falling. There was more blood downstairs, smeared over the floor like a macabre painting.

In some patches the imprint of an arm or part of the torso had been left behind and Grantaire idly wondered if any of the bodies had been those of anyone he knew.

His friends.

Oh god, he hadn’t seen any of them since he’d left them reminiscing on the barricade. They were playing a dangerous game, they kind that people might never come back from.  
Enjolras had tried to stop him from disappearing but Grantaire had taken to drink rather than face the consequences and for the first time in a long time he was regretting it.

He needed to see the bodies, to know who was left. _If there even is anyone left._ His brain told him harshly.

His eyes felt hot and there was a prickling sensation under his eyelids. Grantaire didn’t cry. Not even as he tried to ignore the sharp pain that had settled itself somewhere in the centre of his chest.

It was getting hard to breathe so he stepped outside and into hell itself. How he hadn’t heard the chaos from inside was going to be a mystery that Grantaire never figured out.

It was loud. Women wailing as they clutched at limp bodies covered in drying reddish-brown blood. The cobblestones looked like they had rusted, the sheer amount of blood covering them enough to confirm in Grantaire’s mind that he’d already seen the last of at least some of those he’d been drinking with just hours before.

The barricade itself, that jumbled pile of wood that he’d watched Enjolras and Combeferre and Courfeyrac and all the others built so proudly, it was already gone.

_Enjolras._

Grantaire’s brain had been trying to avoid the name like a shadow avoids the sun but it wasn’t possible to hide from even the name of such a bright beacon of light. Unsure of where to go he approached the nearest person, a young woman sadly scrubbing at a patch of bloodied stone while humming softly to herself.

“Excuse me…” He started but trailed off as he realised he couldn’t verbalise what he wanted to ask.

“They’re mostly over there.” The woman said, her eyes dull and full of sorrow.

 _I’m sorry,_ she seemed to be saying, _for your loss_.

He was sorry too, and he did not know how big his loss even was yet. Grantaire took a deep breath that was intended to steady himself but instead it rattled inside his chest and he shuddered as though someone had thrown a bucket of icy water over him. He followed her gaze with his eyes.

At the far end of the street, laid out in neat rows, were several lines of bodies. A few were dressed in uniform, looking far less grand now that they were in the eternal sleep of death than they had for those first hours after they’d built the barricade, shouting at them to surrender.

It seemed like a lifetime ago, begging and borrowing and kissing and stealing whatever they could to make their dream come true.

Not Grantaire’s dream, although it was all Enjolras’s fantasy, which if he was being honest made it Grantaire’s too.

His feet were heavy, slow to respond and difficult to move as he made his way over to the group of bodies. There were more people crying here, standing over loved ones who had fallen.

The first faces he recognised was those of Jehan Prouvaire and Courfeyrac, lying side by side with faces covered in mud and blood.

He felt like he wasn’t inside his body; as though he was floating somewhere a few feet in the air, the whole scene taking on a dream like quality. He’d switched off, looking down but not really seeing.

Gavroche lay on the other side of Courfeyrac, his small frame looking even tinier in death. Someone had pinned a badge on him, the shiny metal looking completely out of place on the dirty, worn clothing.

Grantaire’s first urge was to remove it, to throw it in the river or watch it melt in a blacksmith’s furnace. But then he realised that it was intended as a sign of respect, recognition of the boy’s bravery.

He walked down the line and they were all there. Joly and Bossuet and Feuilly. Bahorel looked as though he’d gone down with a fight, his fingernails torn and bloody and bruises covered his face.

It was hard to imagine that these were the same people that he’d spent years debating with, listening to them plan and shout and call for change.

Grantaire had nearly reached the end of the line now, passing the girl Eponine, who was still dressed as a boy with her white shirt covered in a deep scarlet.

Combeferre looked almost radiant as he lay there with blood seeping out from beneath him, his hair glowing in the morning sun. But he was positively dull beside the one thing that Grantaire had dared to allow himself to hope might not be there.

Enjolras was not diminished by death, if anything the opposite was true. His red vest was dark and wet, the holes in the front telling Grantaire that he had faced the men who shot him. That was his Enjolras, welcoming death like an old friend.

His arms were slightly apart from his torso, a light smear of blood surrounding him like a set of wings. It was almost blasphemous in nature.

Grantaire knelt down, ignoring the blood that began to seep in through his trousers. He’d never seen Enjolras look so beautiful and it made him sick that the thought could even cross his brain.

He had known it would end here, one day, that Enjolras would not be happy until France was free or he was dead. But Grantaire had always assumed that he would be there with him when it happened.

He could have been. _He should have been._

Bile rose in his throat, hot and bitter. Gently he reached down and brushed a stray bit of hair off Enjolras’s face, a thing he would never had dared to do when…Enjolras would never have let him anyway.

Something wet landed on his hand and he realised that he was crying.

“Get away from here.” A voice whispered harshly into his ear.

“They’re coming back to move the bodies, they’ll kill you if they see that.” A hand reached for his cockade but Grantaire stopped it.

He removed it himself, fumbling blindly with shaking fingers as he was unable to tear his eyes away from Enjolras. He did not look dead, nor did he look like he was sleeping. Even with his eyes closed. Enjolras looked like he was waiting.

Silently he slipped the cockade from Enjolras’s vest, replacing it with his own. He could not leave him there, having given everything for his mother, without that symbolic gesture of love on his chest.

The voice was back, urging him to hurry while strong arms pulled him up and away. He didn’t want to go. He wanted to stay, face the guns as Enjolras had, for them to leave him there on the street side by side with the only man he had ever believed in. He’d failed Enjolras once, he would not do it again.

It was difficult to pin Enjolras’s cockade to the inside of his own vest while he was being jostled up and away but somehow Grantaire managed, allowing himself to be pushed into a narrow alleyway as he pressed the cockade to his chest.

“I have to go back, they’ll bury him in a mass grave. There will be no headstone. I won’t…” He trailed off as he let out a choked sob. But the arms remained firm.

“There is no point in you dying here today.” The voice told him just as firmly. “There is nothing that it will accomplish.”

Grantaire wanted to argue; argue that there was no point in anything, that it would finally stop him from being the failure that he was and always would be, but the words wouldn’t come.

He should be dead, be lying there covered in his own blood in the middle of the Parisian street while young women and old men walked past shaking their heads and muttering sadly about the waste of life.

“I have nothing left.” He said bitterly, trying again to pull away.

“You have your life, you have France and you have memories. You’re richer than many.” None of those things meant anything to Grantaire.

“I don’t want to be rich, I want to be with him.” Grantaire said, his legs giving out from under him. The arms eased him gently down so that he sat on the ground rather than fall.

“And you will be, but not today.” The voice said gently.

The minutes dragged on like hours and Grantaire wondered what they must look like, he and this stranger sitting on the ground in an alleyway. A couple of drunkards perhaps, or grieving relatives.

It didn’t matter, the stranger wouldn’t let Grantaire get up to go and find out.

“That’s the last of them on the cart.” A voice rang out, cutting clearly though Grantaire’s erratic, guilt-ridden thoughts.

“Are you going to let me go now?” Grantaire asked, still clutching at his vest beneath which the cockade rested.

“If you promise me that you will go home and not drink yourself into a coma.”

It was none of the stranger’s business what Grantaire was going to do but if that was what he had to promise to be allowed to go free then that was what he would promise.

“I promise.” He said, turning to face whomever it was that had been near enough to holding him hostage for the past half hour or so.

Whether he wanted to remember his face or punch him square in the nose he hadn’t decided but it didn’t matter. The alley behind him was empty.

Grantaire hurried the few steps to the end of the alley and glanced left and right. There was women cleaning the stones a way down to the right, and a few men stood a short distance up to the left.

No one was moving away from the alley and no one was close enough to have been his stranger. It was as though he had vanished into the ether. Grantaire went back into the alley.

Home was the last place he wanted to be. He didn’t even know what home was. It had seemed a strange concept, that it was a place you were most comfortable around rather than a person.  
Suddenly he was on the ground again, back pressed against the wall. The only one he hadn’t seen was Marius but that didn’t mean anything. He could have been taken to hospital where he succumbed to his wounds, Grantaire had no energy left within himself to care.

He allowed himself to slide down until he was on his side, head resting on a cobblestone that rose a little high than the rest. For a moment he thought he saw someone watching him from the entrance to the alley but he blinked and it became clear that no one was there.

That was fine, it suited him better if he was alone. It was what he deserved, to lie down in a quiet alleyway while the people of Paris wept over the heroes on the main street, alone and ignored.

If he was lucky, he might die.

As he closed his eyes, tears threatening to come again, he wished that the stranger had let him kiss Enjolras on the forehead before he’d forced him away. That just once he could be allowed that simple act of affection.

 _Combeferre, Courfeyrac, Prouvaire, Joly, Lesgle, Feuilly, Bahorel, the girl Eponine, the boy Gavroche, Enjolras._ He recited the names in his mind like a prayer. He did not include Marius, not knowing his fate.

 _Combeferre, Courfeyrac, Prouvaire, Joly, Lesgle, Feuilly, Bahorel, the girl Eponine, the boy Gavroche, Enjolras._ Paris started to fade away as Grantaire withdrew into his mind.

 _Combeferre, Courfeyrac, Feuilly, Bahorel, Gavroche, Enjolras._ He was shaking, fingers reaching under his vest and clutching at the cockade.

 _Combeferre, Courfeyrac, Enjolras._ They all died as heroes while he lay upstairs in a drunken stupor.

 _Enjolras._ As he drifted into a restless sleep, his face wet and his heart heavy, he could have sworn he saw that beautiful face.

_Enjolras._


	2. Unreality

When he awoke several hours later his whole body ached. He’d woken up in less pain after drunken fights. The sky was a rosy pink, colour stretching over the clouds like a silken sheet. Prouvaire would like it, compose some quick little poem to amuse them all. _Except he won’t._ Jehan couldn’t write anything anymore.

The silken sheet of rose transformed into the stained cobblestones as the world turned. Without really knowing what he was doing or why, Grantaire stumbled his way out of the alley and back down to the cafe. His muscles screamed at him in protest as each step filled his calves and thighs with fire.

The street was quiet, the residue left on the ground a muted brown that could almost be confused for dried mud.

As he approached the cafe his eyes were drawn to the top window. There was a body hanging there, legs barely clinging to the rough sill. Red, so much red. A red coat, red stains on a white shirt, red lines running down an outstretched hand and threatening to drip onto the street below, a red flag fluttering like wings in the breeze. An angel of death, brought down to earth.

Grantaire’s feet slipped and he staggered sideways for a few steps before he recomposed himself. The window was empty when he looked again. A small group of soldiers stood further up the street and for a moment Grantaire thought they might come towards him as they stared down at him, but they turned back to each other and laughed.

 _They think I’m drunk._ On any other day they would be right. Not knowing what else to do, and not being able to bear being so near the cafe, he wandered the neighbouring streets. He didn’t know how long he walked for and by the time he stopped at a shabby little house that advertised rooms to let he did not even know where he was.

 _Yes, we do single nights._ The old man had assured him, taking the money up front and agreeing to Grantaire’s request for as much wine as could be found. The skin on the back of Grantaire’s neck prickled and he could sense someone watching him as he stood at the door, but when he checked the street was empty.

“Did you see anyone behind me?” Grantaire asked the old man as he showed him his quarters for the night.

“No, it’s not a well used road after dark. Why, were you expecting someone?” There was a soft suspicion in the man’s gaze.

“No.” An old woman came into the room with four bottles of wine and fresh blankets. Grantaire suspected that he came across as cold and rude as he accepted them from her, but there was nothing left within him that cared. He was glad when they left him alone.

The first bottle had disappeared before he noticed the old piano in the corner of the room. Grantaire didn’t play the piano, not really. Playing implied some goal in mind rather than his preferred method of running his fingers over the keys and letting whatever happened happen.

He was there at the piano without knowing how he got there, fingers resting idly on the keys. He pressed down, no rhyme or reason to the chords that he chose save that they were all melancholy and empty. He closed his eyes and let the melody and the wine take him away, far far away from the streets of Paris. As he continued to play the music grew fuller and the chords rounded, a harmony that shouldn’t have worked yet wasn’t anything but pleasant to the ear.

Then a hand brushed his. Grantaire’s eyes flew open as he glanced wildly to his left. A familiar face, as radiant and handsome as ever, smiled at him. Grantaire started so violently that he toppled off the piano stool and landed heavily on the floor.

He picked himself back up as quickly as he could, standing next to the stool with his heart thumping in his chest. He reached a hand and touched the smooth skin of Enjolras’ arm. It felt real enough, warm and soft beneath his fingers. But there was something off about the way Enjolras seemed to glow. He’d always been a metaphorical beacon, drawing the dreamers and believers of youth towards him like moths to a flame. But this was different, something altogether more unnatural.

“Are you real?” He asked, running his fingers over the bright red fabric covering Enjolras’s shoulder. It wasn’t heavy enough.

“That depends on what you mean by real.” Enjolras replied, the ghost of a smile still etched on his lips. It was wrong, all wrong. Enjolras didn’t smile, not at him. Not for him.

“I’ve gone mad.” He mumbled, turning and reaching for a bottle of wine. A hand closed around his wrist.

“No.” It was a command, soft but firm, and Grantaire stopped with the bottle halfway to his lips.

“Why not?” He asked bitterly. Of course Enjolras would not let him drink. He had never liked Grantaire’s wine consumption before, why would it change now that he was a hallucination, or a ghost, or whatever the hell it was that was going on now.

“Because we have work to do.” At the ‘we’ Grantaire wrenched his wrist from Enjolras’s grasp angrily.

“We have work to do? We do? What’s the we? You’re dead. I saw you with my own eyes. Lying there on the streets of Paris like the perfect martyr we always knew you would be. YOU ARE DEAD!” He screamed the last words so loudly that they rattled around inside his head. With an anguished cry he fell to his knees, wine spilling on the floor.

“I may be dead, but you are not.” Enjolras said, crouching down so that his face was level with Grantaire’s. Even that felt wrong. Enjolras should be up on a pedestal, high above him and unattainable, not bending down and treating him like an equal.

“And a fat lot of good that is.” Grantaire said, reaching for the wine again but stopped at the sad look on Enjolras’s face.

“Don’t look at me like that, like I’ve disappointed you. I know I have. I’ve failed you, over and over again. You told me I wouldn’t even know how to die and I didn’t. I failed to even wake up as they shot you in the chest because I’m nothing but a useless drunkard. Then I couldn’t even be shot as I wept over you in the street because I let myself be dragged away like the coward I am.” Grantaire’s fingers curled as he spat out the words as though they were poison.

“There was no point in you dying today. It would have accomplished nothing. We still have work to do.” Enjolras said, resting a hand on Grantaire’s shoulder. It took a few moments for what Enjolras had just said to sink in.

“Oh god, I am mad. I ought to be in an asylum.” He groaned, running a hand through his hair.

“It was you, pushing me through the streets and away. What must I have looked like, staggering about and talking to myself?”

“Like a drunkard, no different than usual.” Grantaire didn’t know whether to laugh or cry and compromised by letting out a single choked sob.

“As you say, I am a drunkard. So what work could I possibly do? What use can I be when I cannot even successfully die?”

Enjolras gazed at him impassively, a gentle curl to his lips.

“You’ll know. When it happens you will know.” He replied cryptically.

“Oh you are not even going to tell me. That would be too simple, I’ve got to come up with far more complex delusions than that. Why should I bother? What is to stop me from drinking myself to death in this room?” He was angry, angry with the vagueness of Enjolras’s request and angry with himself for still being around to be angry.

Enjolras smiled and Grantaire wanted to punch him in the face.

“I see. Well if I’m are going to play this game of madness, is there anything you can tell me?”

“Be at the cafe, tomorrow after lunch.”

Grantaire nodded, sighing wearily. He’d only been awake for perhaps 5 hours yet he felt as exhausted as if he’d been awake for 50.

“You should rest.” Enjolras said, gently but firmly.

“I don’t need to rest.” Grantaire wondered why he was bothering to lie to himself. He picked up the wine and put it back up on the table.

“This is not me resting.” He insisted firmly as he lay down on the bed. Enjolras dragged the piano stool over beside the bed and sat on it. How great is my hallucination if I can believe that it has moved a material object across the room.

“Are you going to sit there all night?” Again, Enjolras’s only response was to smile. It was infuriating.

“If you were in my place right now, what would you do? Don’t say sleep because we both know that would be a lie.” Grantaire asked as he settled in on top of the blankets.

“I would talk to God.” Enjolras answered after a moment.

“I don’t know if I believe in God.”

“I know. You don’t believe in anything.” Grantaire frowned.

“That’s not true.”

“Isn’t it?” Grantaire shook his head.

“I believe in you. I always have.” They fell silent for a moment as Grantaire tried to think of how to continue. 

Then he started to talk, about his family and his childhood friends. About where he went to school and the games he used to play. About the girls he had loved and the songs he had sung. About his pet hates and his favourite things. Enjolras listened until Grantaire’s lips stopped moving as the sky grew light and his eyelids drooped.

“Now will you rest?” He asked, a single eyebrow raised and his lip curling upwards.

“Will you kiss me good morning?” Grantaire’s response was slow and sleepy. Enjolras leaned over and placed a chaste kiss on Grantaire’s forehead.

“Good morning.”

Grantaire slept. In his dreams he had wings.


	3. The Ant, The Boot, and the Angel of Death

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Grantaire returns to the cafe because there is something he has to do.

The café was dark and quiet when Grantaire approached. The street was silent, almost devoid of all sight and sound. Paris herself was still mourning the events of two nights ago. The only people that Grantaire could see were soldiers, or police, he did not care too look too hard beyond the uniform as they stood talking at the far end of the street.

A breeze swept down the street, the chill biting through Grantaire’s clothing like razor sharp teeth. He had no scarf to pull over his face so he buried his chin into his chest and drew his vest up as much as he could.

“Marius, it isn’t safe.” A girl’s voice came from one of the narrow laneways nearby. Grantaire froze. Marius was alive. Marius was alive and like him had been drawn back to the café.

“I need to see it, I need to see where they died.” Grantaire could sympathise with that statement, could hear the guilt and pain that riddled Marius’s voice. He crouched down on the ground, pushing himself against the café wall and hiding his face. He hoped he looked like a beggar, commonplace and not worthy of notice.

A young couple rounded the corner and it was a moment before Grantaire recognised Marius. He was dressed neatly in black but his skin was pale and his step weak. Somehow he managed to look shattered yet resolute, bent almost to the point of snapping but not quite broken.

“You’ve seen it now, can we leave?” The girl whispered urgently. Marius shook his head.

“I’m going upstairs. Are you coming?” The girl shook her head.

“No. I’ll wait for you here.” Marius kissed on her the cheek and disappeared inside. Now that he was not in danger of being recognised Grantaire lowered his hands and stopped hugging himself to the wall. He could see the girl’s face clearly now, young and beautiful. There was no hiding the warmth the lay within nor the kindness in her eyes. She must be Cosette, the one who had so thoroughly captured Marius’s affections. At another time Grantaire might have admired her, tried to make her smile with words.

“Are you all right Monsieur?” He blinked stupidly before he realised that she was talking to him. He let himself sway a little bit and pretended to be drunk, muttering something purposefully unintelligible and taking a step away from her.

The girl paid him no more attention after that, having satisfied herself that he was not ill or begging for alms. Minutes passed and Marius did not emerge. If Grantaire listened carefully he thought he could hear a voice murmuring away upstairs. Cosette began to pace anxiously, clearly torn between going inside to fetch him and trying not to make a scene.

The uniforms at the end of the street had stopped talking and were watching her closely. At first he thought it was just because she was a pretty woman. A man in uniform is first and foremost a man after all. But as they began to walk towards them he could see that there was no lust or admiration in their eyes, only suspicion.  
That’s when he realised that they had been there waiting. Waiting for someone to return to the café, to reveal themselves as an uncaught and alive member of the revolutionaries and rebels. Then a second realisation and suddenly the whole of the past two days fell into place.

Launching himself to feet he ran into the middle of the street to ensure that all eyes were on him.

“Long live the Revolution!” He shouted at the top of his voice, removing Enjolras’s cockade from the inside of his vest and pinning it on the outside over his heart.  
Behind him he could sense Cosette start with alarm before running into the café.

“Revolution? Is that what you call it? A foolish little rebellion that we crushed like you would an ant beneath you boot.” One of the uniforms jeered, his face twisted and cruel.

“The boot may win over an individual ant, but be careful that you are quick to lift it again lest the colony rise up and cover your body. The boot has no power if there is no flesh to lift it.” Grantaire called back, preparing himself to run.

“How fortunate for us that you are a lone ant.” It was a different uniform but the same sneering tone. Grantaire smiled. He smiled and then he threw back his head and laughed. It was the happiest, fullest laugh that he had done in a long time.

“I am not alone. The angel of death walks beside me.” That seemed to throw them a bit.

“Yours is the side of chaos and anarchy. God would never side with one such as you.” The first uniform spat viciously. They were growing impatient.

“I never said I walked with God.” That pushed the uniforms over the edge and they moved to lower their guns. 

Grantaire sprinted, dodging them easily in his sober state as he aimed for the alley that he had slept in the day before. The uniforms took a few seconds to react, before they took off after him. A shot fired but it missed by meters as Grantaire took a sharp left at the end of the alley. Another pair of soldiers turned at the sound of the shot and began to run at him, forcing him to do a sharp u turn and make a run for the right.

He hadn’t noticed that he was yelling out insults and curses as he ran, words tumbling out of his mouth without his brain comprehending what it was that he was saying. The street ahead was straight and long and if he continued along it he was sure to be shot in the back.

There was only one narrow offshoot that Grantaire stood a chance of reaching and he made a dash for it, the muscles in his legs screaming as he pushed them harder than he ever had before. His lungs burned and it was growing hard to breathe. The lane had a bend in it and as Grantaire reached it he realised that it formed an L shape. He was trapped, the only way out was the way that he had come. This was it then. He reached the end of the laneway and let himself slide down the wall so low that he was almost touching the ground.

“I led them away. If Marius is smart and does not let his grief cloud his judgement again he shall live to see a happy future with Cosette. That’s what you wanted me to do, was it not?” He asked, his lungs straining to drawn enough air to permit him to speak. Enjolras was there, crouched beside him.

“It was.” He replied simply.

“May I die now?” He did not know why he felt the need to ask permission. It was unlikely that he would be walking out of this one.

“If that’s what you wish.” Enjolras replied, standing up.

“You will be waiting for me?” Grantaire pressed as sound of feet drew close.

“I’ll meet you at the gates.” Enjolras said, grabbing Grantaire’s shoulder and helping him get to his feet. The uniforms rounded the corner, fire in their eyes.

“I won’t leave this alley until you do.” Enjolras whispered, tall and fearless as he looked into Grantaire’s eyes. That was all he needed. Grantaire mirrored him, stretching himself to full height. He was amused, in a morbid fashion, to find that he did not feel afraid.

“May I?” He asked, holding his hand out as the uniforms aimed their guns at his chest. Enjolras did not reply, reaching out and winding his fingers through Grantaire’s. They were cold and warm and alive and dead.

Flashing. Banging. Smoke. Pain.

Grantaire was not falling. He was flying with his angel of death.


End file.
